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>>Phyllis Schlafly is a hero to all conservatives.

Anyone who has bad words for her is a DU plant.<<

Nobody should be above being disagreed with, if we think they are wrong.

There are some things about Phyllis Schlafley I admire, like he standing up to the John Birch Society when they wanted to go overboard looking for traitors among Americans - even at the cost of not concentrating on the the very real threat of the Soviet Union. I admire a woman in her 80’s standing up for her principles.

I agree with her criticism for the front runners and her concern about Americans who lose jobs.

But if she advocates high tarrifs and shutting down free trade, I’m gonna disagree with her like I disagreed with her when she didn’t want government to address AIDs early on.

Free trade was center piece of President Reagan’s policy - he got that right.

Free trade with enemies was not a centerpiece of Reagan’s policies. China is an enemy. The notion that they would improve their behavior with ‘free trade’ was ridiculous. We’ve enriched a nation of communists who are perhaps the most irresponsible nation on the world stage.

And no one, not Sclafly, not Hunter, want to stop trading. Hunter and Schlafly both decry our loss of sovereignty to the WTO on this issue. We were threatened with billions in fines for giving our exporters a tax cut, so we had to rescind them. It is something that Reagan would never have stood for. GATT is not the WTO.

Phyllis Schlafly's most important contribution to the conservative cause was her opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s. Had that passed, the reconstruction of American society along secular humanist, anti-family, anti-male lines would be even further along than it is now.

As for the issue of free trade, consideration must be given to what the legitimate military needs of the United States will be in the future. Unless you adhere to a Ron Paul-like position of withdrawing from world affairs, you must deal with the issue of the manufacturing and technological base needed to wage war successfully. (In fact, a neo-isolationist regime would have the same problem.) The Civil War and the two World Wars were won by the side that had the greater industrial capacity. If the United States lacks sufficient capacity in areas such as aircraft, motor vehicles, machine tools, electronics, primary metals, computers, and shipbuilding, our ability to project military power will be limited. Russia wants to restore its place in the sun, and China is a superpower wannabe. Neither can directly challenge us now, but that may not be the case in 10-20 years.

It may not be simon-pure Austrian economics, nor the received dogma of the foreign policy establishment, but if the United States is to play a leading force in the world against Muslim extremism, resurgent Marxism, and the Russian and Chinese threat, we must have the means to do so.